INTRO: Even with the election of the Muslim
Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi as the country’s first- ever freely elected
civilian president, the Egyptian Revolution continues to look uncertain. Today
commentator and veteran ABC News foreign correspondent Barrie Dunsmore reviews where things now
stand.

TEXT: From the moment the
thirty year dictator Hosni Mubarak was swept
out of office by a broadly based popular revolution, there were two basic questions.

One: Would the 84 year old
opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, become the major political force in a
democratic Egypt?

Two: Would the firmly
entrenched Egyptian military- which had wielded not only total political power
for decades but had also taken over
control of the country’s economy - ever be willing to cede power to a civilian
authority?

Sixteen months later it would
seem the answers are yes and no.

Yes - because the Muslim Brotherhood has won the key
elections for both parliament and the presidency.

And no – because the Egyptian
military has strongly signaled it will not turn over real power to civilian
control.

What
exists in Egypt
for the moment is a standoff - between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Supreme
Council of the Armed Forces - over who is actually going to run the country.
Just two weeks before June 30th, the date the generals had promised
to hand over power, they instead issued a series of decrees which stripped away
most of the powers of the presidency and shut down the Islamist led
democratically elected parliament. The army also created its own body to write
a new constitution which would preserve the military’s primacy- and martial law
was re-imposed.

Mohammed Morsi, the new
president- elect is 60 years old. He earned a doctorate in engineering from the
University of Southern
California and later taught in Egypt. But he is best known for his
fundamentalist views within the Muslim Brotherhood. He became the accidental
presidential candidate, when Mubarak- era judges banned the Brotherhood’s first
choice.

By most accounts, Morsi’s inclination would be to turn Egypt
into an Islamist state with limited interest in women’s rights, minorities or
Egypt’s liberal traditions, But in his
first address Morsi went out of his way to appeal to all Egyptians , promising
to respect the rights of women, Christians and secular Muslims. As he put it,
“I will serve all Egypt.
There will be no distinction between anybody.”

That commitment is making a
virtue out of necessity. For if Morsi is going to successfully challenge the
authority of the military, he is going to need broad support – including from
the secularists and liberals whose passionate protests led the revolution.

An all-out bloody confrontation
is certainly possible, but not yet inevitable. There is one idea circulating,
that having made their point, the generals may now step back to allow new parliamentary
elections and a new Constitution acceptable to both sides. In return they would
expect that key military, security and intelligence functions would remain
under their control.

The benefit of such an
arrangement would be stability- which is essential to attracting new foreign
investment and tourism so that Egypt’s
crumbling economy can be restored. Sounds plausible. However like most major
revolutions, after just 16 months the Egyptian version is far from having run
its course.